My latest Debian update on a system where I have a variety of Web browsers finally did pick up Firefox 52, and as I update various distributions I'm gradually starting to see it available in more of them - though in OpenSUSE, as of early this week, I still didn't have Firefox 52 in either openSUSE 42.2 Leap, or openSUSE Tumbleweed. IF I get a chance this weekend to do some updates, maybe they'll be rolling in by that time.

I have Firefox 52 running on Mint 18, 64-bt, kernel 4.4.0-21. Seems to run quickly enough with good stability. If a person prefers Chrome in whichever guise so be it. Either Chrome or Firefox gets the job done.Best to you Mas!

I have Firefox 52 running on Mint 18, 64-bt, kernel 4.4.0-21. Seems to run quickly enough with good stability. If a person prefers Chrome in whichever guise so be it. Either Chrome or Firefox gets the job done.Best to you Mas!

It's been a while since I've used Mint; for me, MX-16 suits my "easy system" needs and I don't need the stuff in Mint, and MX is decidedly more responsive, so that's it.

My systems where I maintain my own browsers (not from the distro repos, but from Mozilla.org). Speaking of that, I tried something funny just to see if it'll work. I grabbed Firefox 52 from Mozilla.org and put it on "My Drive", if you can believe it, from a Chromebook. Not sure if it's even installable on the Chromebook, but the thought was that with one download, I could put it on any of my distributions, so we'll see if that works or not!

I do have Firefox running on a couple of systems; where I don't have it, perhaps a private copy in my home directory tree will do the job!

I decided to give Mint a good test to see how it works for an extended time. As a result I understand why so many people like it. It does not fuss and it does what an OS should do, which is manage resources and apps in a (mostly) background manner. The repos do keep apps such as Firefox current, which for some people is critically important. So Mint works, but as you point out it is not the lightest dancer on the floor.

If a person wants up-to-date apps with a Debian foundation antiX is certainly a good choice; the design is clever, tools are first-rate and apps are current. On my hardware it runs w/o major hiccups. If a person wants a good, stable platform for either Chrome or Firefox antiX provides a good one!

Firefox 53 seems to be pretty solid; I probably use Firefox more often that Chrome. Google Chrome used to be very light and fast. It may still be FAST - PROVIDED you have a system with a lot of memory, and if you have a many CPU system - most of the new ones have 4-8 processors routinely, and often more - then Chrome is more likely capable of taking good advantage of it. But my decade old laptops with only 2 CPU processors and 2 GB of memory in each system don't show of nearly as well with Google Chrome today, whereas a decade ago Chrome was definitely the light weight browser of choice. When I really need a light browser, I find Midori can do the job, but it's nowhere near as stable as either Firefox or Chrome, so it can handle only limited jobs and tasks before running into trouble. In those cases, Firefox wins.Seamonkey, as long as you don't load it up with lots of extra processes, is arguably smaller and faster, believe it or not, than Firefox, though Firefox, like Chrome, started out much smaller. But Firefox and Chrome have both grown; Seamonkey has grown to a lesser extent.

On the phone it's been working quite well. I don't particularly miss Firefox or Chrome there; only try them occasionally; Brave is my Android browser now. If it gets more prevalent, maybe I'll make it a regular choice elsewhere too.

I was using Firefox 53 over the weekend, and I suspect it rivals the other browsers in most capabilities at this point.As I mentioned on Friday though, the "Brave" Web browser, a Chrome derivative, is a good alternative.

Wikipedia has these opening comments about it: "Brave is a free and open-source[4][5][6] web browser based on the Chromium web browser and its Blink engine, announced by the co-founder of the Mozilla Project, Brendan Eich. It claims to block website trackers and remove intrusive Internet advertisements. The browser also claims to improve online privacy by sharing less data with advertising customers. As of 2017, it is currently in beta testing for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux.[7]" (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser) )

I decided to give Mint a good test to see how it works for an extended time. As a result I understand why so many people like it. It does not fuss and it does what an OS should do, which is manage resources and apps in a (mostly) background manner. The repos do keep apps such as Firefox current, which for some people is critically important. So Mint works, but as you point out it is not the lightest dancer on the floor.

If a person wants up-to-date apps with a Debian foundation antiX is certainly a good choice; the design is clever, tools are first-rate and apps are current. On my hardware it runs w/o major hiccups. If a person wants a good, stable platform for either Chrome or Firefox antiX provides a good one!

Hi Bill!

I happened to notice a few comments made by mmmna that pretty much echo my past personal experiences with Mint, and they don't change very much from version to version. I'd say that similar comments probably apply to openSUSE as well: both of them are pretty easy to install and use, Mint even more so than openSUSE, though openSUSE is right up there with Debian when it comes to its toolchest: plenty of command and GUI based tools; YAST has been updated many times and is a modern, useful tool. The common point with Mint and openSUSE is that both consume a great deal of resources. Mmmna commented that a certain Debian derivative (with clear hints that it was Mint) consume a LOT more resources than Debian, and they also have strange defects that will sometimes show up in a command but not in a GUI or vice versa. I'd not tested recently at that level, but past experience is that Mint, while pleasant to install and use can be downright annoying unless you're using it on current state of the art hardware with ample capacity. Back when I used my decade old Dell Dimension 4100, Mint crawled. Now that my Lenovo and Gateway laptops are getting that age, I see the same thing with them, and only my fastest systems work well.

But recently when I start up my Dell Inspiron 5558, which is now more than 3 years old, I'm starting to see resource heavy distributions like openSUSE and PCLinuxOS take a really long time to boot; they run fine once they're booted to the login screen, but can take a couple of minutes to go through the boot process. I was able to boot to login in under a minute on most distributions when the system was new, and I preferred booting to openSUSE because it WAS one of the best at locating all of the distributions on the disk, but these advantages are starting to fade. I may eventually get rid of some of the systems since I've not had the time to test them and just stick with the ones that work cleanly and quickly.

Regarding the browser, Firefox, since Version 52, has put more emphasis on performance, and will do so even more as the next generation of releases arrives. Firefox 57 is *supposed* to be even more of an "eye opener" when it's released.

Meanwhile, Firefox Focus is a light, fast mobile browser for phones - good feature is that it gets rid of all "breadcrumbs" when it closes. Only caveat is that it doesn't work well on 100% of sites; the ones that ASSUME that cache and environments are retained don't work very well. I have only three browsers on my latest phone, the MOTO G5 Plus: the Google Chrome that I think came with it, Firefox Focus and Firefox Nightly. Frankly I'm using Nightly for a lot of stuff, and Focus for simple sites that I want to access quickly that don't require authentication, such as sites where I'm only reading an article. I can do most of that on my phone; performance is nearly as good as a medium range desktop system, though not as good as top[ end hardware; the G5 Plus is one of the better inexpensive commodity phones, but it's neither a high end phone or capable of competing with any fast system; it has the right price and feature point for most of what I need these days, so I'm happy that I went in that direction.

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